Ayush Gupta
Jul 28, 2017 · 11 min read

27 lessons I learned in 27 years.

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I turned 27 in the month of May. So this is a late post but nevertheless very important for me as I pass on the learning I had in last 27 years. I don’t want people to reinvent the wheel and commit the same mistake again and again. Without giving more fuss or gyan I would jump to the main content.

  1. Love yourself: I looked for long to get a better partner but to my surprise when I got one it was real of little help. If you are not in love with yourself, you will never feel that love beyond a limit. This is what SRK has to say about it in the above video, very wise words.
  2. Be your own boss: Take your own decision, listen to everyone and develop the ability to assess from various data points. Go for an internship, work for free, give value or add value to the system as much as possible you will soon start getting the benefits in monetary terms. I never took many opportunities to go for an internship which I regret, so go for internship, training, volunteering etc and learn things as early as possible.
  3. Look for the work you enjoy from very beginning (Project Passion) : In above point I have mentioned that you should opt for as many as possible opportunities to work in your early years this will not only help you to be on your own and teach you lesson but will help you to know about your liking, the kind of work that you can do for life, keep experimenting in early years so that you can pick that up for remaining life and develop skills around it. I learned it very later in life, listen to your intuition that voice which whispers it will never be loud and clear it will always whisper so keep your ears open and listen to it. Listen to what Steve Jobs has to talk about passion.

4. Help others : The gist of helping others is that whatever work we do is in some way helping someone, or adding value to the system. I developed ServiceNow app for a client which helped them to make their processes efficient. So the gist of any work is to help others. Keeping that attitude will help in growing a lot in professional and personal life both. If we see this with philosophical perspective then you will also earn good Karma so you can think in that sense also.

5. Have a great network of people: There was this particularly challenging time I am going through last few years because of career I choose for myself which brings lot many challenges. Many of these problems which I faced could have been resolved easily but couldn’t because I didn’t have that vibrant network or contacts to seek help from. We all need help now and then. Make a strong network it will help you to sail easily through your life during the difficult and challenging phase. I have read great advice from many writers about the networking, like one I read recently in Why People Fail by Siimon Reynolds it is great book to read and I will soon write the review too, so stay tuned.

6. Be open to new ideas: Many of my friends are not open to trying a new restaurant, a new dish or there is this resistance, always to try something new. In this habit of resistance we miss many things. I always tried new things, sometimes I had bad experiences but many times I had good experiences too. These experiences led to open many windows and gave fresh perspective about life. I tried Solo travel blogging. Yes, I tried. I went on some 15 days trip without much planning. You can read my solo travelling experience here. I learned about life and encountered with people from all walks of life. Also learned that solo travelling is not my cup of tea as of now.

Look what I found wandering in the markets of least touched parts of India. Se posed

Took photo of her in a weekly flea market at Amarkantak. The pure innocence.

7. Read. : This one habit distinguish ordinary people from extra ordinary people. I learnt this lesson very late in my life, but its okay to be late than never. I have developed habit of reading now. Currently I am reading non fiction books to learn traits of great leaders. You can choose your genre and pick up the habit. But before starting reading it is also important to read faster, one book that has helped me immensely to read faster is “How to better and faster” by Norman Lewis. This book is highly recommended when you prepare for competitive examinations also. Pick up this book to read faster as daily we have to gulp & process so much of data, so its better to process it fast.

8. Write: There many benefits of writing. It has helped me relieve stress and move faster in life. It has helped in setting goals and expressing me. Now and then we will be asked to write and express about different things in our life so it becomes important for us to have this skill of writing with least possible grammatical mistakes. People out there are grammar nazis and we have to pay a big price sometimes for bad English. Some more read about the benefits here. Google the benefits, you will find many reasons for it.

10. Move fast: I have moved slowly in my life. This is one thing I regret. Sometimes it is okay to move slowly. But if you have dreams, like me, which are quite intimidating when even you think about that then it is better to move faster. I am not saying to jump from one to another one frequently without accomplishing anything in life. As it is being said, “fail faster and succeed sooner.”

11. Don’t run behind money: When I started up all I thought about is the money but it was never about the value I was creating in the first place. I had to close everything down. I was all broke. The lesson I learned which even many successful people will also tell you about is that think about the value you are providing to the people or to the world, that only will bring you the monetary gains you are aiming to. We are hardly being told about this particular lesson in school or even in college. Even when you work you never ponder on this thought that. So think about the value you are creating for which you are charging or earning. If the value is in place, money will flow automatically. It may take sometime but will happen for sure. For value creation you have to gain skills. So work on skill learning.

See what Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones has to say about work, passion, & money. A very insightful video.

12. Respect elders: With so much information on our finger tips we are tend to believe that we know much more than our parents, elders or seniors. We think that they are naive about our world. They might not have information as much as we do but certainly have experience of dealing with people and many other aspects of life. So when they give advice on something which is completely goes over you, don’t think that they are wrong. It is just a perspective which has been built by some experience or conditioning they have gone through so think about that, what makes them give this statement. It will give you fresh perspective about your problem. The experience bad or good, yours or someone else, whose ever it is, but nevertheless it is very priceless. So if someone is sharing their experience hear it patiently & respect them.

13. Meditate: It has helped me a lot. It will help you too. Wouldn’t talk much about it. Think about it, try it out. Even Google give sessions on meditation to it’s employees. I hope that will certainly motivate you.

14. You are own your own baby , no one owes you anything.

Anurag Kashyap sums it up, all I want to say. Watch it. Worth your time.

15. Take risk. I took many risk in my life and had to pay price for it. But it is important to take risk for big success in your life. Take calculated risk. 20’s are for taking risks. You will be back on track if you fail, otherwise you will rise and shine.

16. Listen to your intuition, gut. :

Now this point is little tricky to explain. Some of you might agree with me and some of you will not. There is always a voice which will be guiding you, telling you about many things. When you take shower you get great ideas and as we come out, we just don’t give much emphasis or thought to it. But that something is priceless. It has been processed by your sub conscious mind and given to you. It is always very difficult to listen to that voice and follow. Listen to what Steven Spielberg have to say about intuition.

17. Give chance to others.: We are sometimes not open to give chances to novice. I have seen many of my friends who are great in their jobs but they got the chance very late. The reasons might be many. They may have lacked some requirements, but help others rise. Help them. You definitely would have been in same position some time when you were not that experienced, knowledgeable person. Give chance to others. Read what Jason Fried, of Rework, who also invented Ruby on Rails has to say about hiring, a very nice and insightful read.

18. You can learn everything on your own.: This one I can say very confidently. I have learned so many things on my own in last one and half year after I quit my job from online resources. It is hard to learn on our own but we can. Udemy, edx, youtube, and many more resources are there to learn from. So if you feel like you don’t have enough resources then just don’t worry at all you have plenty of resources to learn from. Internet has democratized opportunities so go and grab one.

19. Travel: This one is very important. I have traveled a lot in recent times and learned many things. It has certainly helped me to change my perspective about the things which are important in life and ponder over things which matters at the end of the day. So travel as much as possible. People founded companies after hitch hiking. Don’t believe me? Read this, what led Narayana Murthy to found Infosys.

20. Work on EQ. : Emotional Quotient is very important aspect to become successful in life. In my previous job, in a particular team I was not the one whom teammates used to like a lot. It was not because I was not a jovial go person but I was a rebel. This nature of rebel, because of many reasons, is something people never liked and that led for the lesser opportunity in that project. I learned that you have to be a people persons first then only you will be able to land opportunities. You have to control emotions. There are some amazing books which should be read on high priority to understand Emotional Quotient. These books are written by Daniel Goleman, who is pioneer in this subject. Google about him. He has written: Emotional Intelligence, Focus and many more books on this topic. It will help you to work on it. I am also working on it. I am currently reading, Why People Fail. In this books also there is a section where there is proper emphasis on why one should focus on building EQ rather than IQ after some point of time.

21. Internship is important:

In Robert Greene’s Mastery, he has given a lot emphasis on apprenticeship to gain skills to become successful in life. By reading it, you will come to know how successful people have slogged in their initial years to gain skills and exposure. During initial years your work definitely is not going to make any dent in the universe. But if you keep your eyes open and keep building skills as early as possible in your life, it will be helpful to rise in your career and life easily. The ride will be a lot more easy. Go for internships, as many as possible. Don’t know how to get one? There are plenty of options to choose from like internshala, letsintern, twenty19 etc. Just go for it.

22. Give value to the system always: If you have come to this world then you have to give value to this world in some or the other way then only you will be able to earn something. Until and unless you don’t have some well of oil on your name in Arab. So think about the value you can give to the system. I never gave a deep thought about this, and when I started thinking about it created more problem. I pondered upon it so late that I had to make many compromises on career front and the situations started becoming more perplexed. So before it becomes too late in your life, think about it. It is very important to know where exactly you fit and benefit the system. I will give you an example. Suppose you are studying computer science in your bachelors and then you have so many different subjects, and you particularly like Java programming then start thinking about how your skills of Java programming can help solve problem of companies, general problems in life, where commonly it is used etc etc. This is how your thinking should be towards giving value to the system.

23. Partner be it in business or life can make you or break you. Be cautious. Making blunder on this front will leave you broken. It takes time to heal. I have paid price for it. It takes toll on your health, social life and many more aspects of your life. So be very cautious about it. If you are starting up business also you will never think about parting away, just like when you are getting married, so think through it thoroughly. You will be spending lot of your time, energy and emotions with your business partner too, be very careful.

24. Rejections are important: During my college days, I got rejected by more than 15 companies. Something shifted in me after so many rejections. It was tough time. I improved gradually on many aspects. It helped me to ponder on many things about myself. My self awareness got improved. So yes rejections are important don’t be afraid about it. Accept it with open arms. Even if a guy/girl ditches you, it’s completely fine. Now you must have been cursing me that I don’t have any idea how it feels to get rejected by someone whom you love. Sorry to disappoint you, I have experience there too. :)

See this awesome, ted talk.

25. Life is more like a game. Keep playing. You are the game. Play with your strengths. Period.

26. Spend time with elders. This one is important, as with our fast paced we are not even able to spend time with our self, then we can’t even think about spending time with elders. It will help you to gain experience from them. It will also help you to understand what regrets they have and will motivate you to take risk and regret less in life.

27. Stay with people who are on same mission as you. Birds of same group flocks together. You are average of 5 persons around you. Need I say more? I hope you would have understood what I want to say here.

If you have thoughts about startups, travel, career , passion & like to discuss with me, please feel free to connect with me. I would be happy to help you.
Write me at ayush[at]youngnomads[dot]in

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